Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Spoken English tests'

This study examines the problems of constructing and administering a test of spoken English for Vietnamese EFL teacher-trainees. In an attempt to standardize the assessment, a planned oral interview was pilottested with a group of ten Vietnamese EFL teachers currently enrolled in a Graduate Diploma Course in TESOL at the Canberra College of Advanced Education, Australia. Results of the study indicate that the validity and reliability of such measurement can be achieved if certain carefully outlined procedures in planning the test and training the testers are carefully followed. Given the close relationship between testing and teaching, it is suggested in this study that there could be an improvement in the teaching of spoken English to Vietnamese EFL teacher-trainees if (i) the amount of time allocated to testing oral proficiency in the curriculum was increased, (ii) Vietnamese EFL teachers were provided with formal training in language test construction, and (iii) research on EFL oral testing was encouraged. Further, this study recommends co-operation between TEFL institutions in Vietnam to develop standard instruments for the assessment of spoken English of EFL teacher-trainees on a national level.

Teaching & Learning
Ph.D.
In this study I addressed three problems related to how sandhi-variation, the adjustments made by speakers to the speech stream, filters comprehension for second language listener processing. The first was the need to better understand proficiency problems encountered by L2 listeners as they decode the speech stream with the phonological features of sandhi-variation, elision and assimilation, by investigating the item difficulty hierarchy of the phenomena. The second was the scarcity of research on aural processing abilities of second language learners in relation to their understanding sandhi-variation in aural texts. The third concerns the lack of research investigating links between learners’ backgrounds and their ability to handle listening texts, especially variations in the speech stream in target aural texts. The purpose of this study was threefold. My first purpose was to investigate the item difficulty hierarchy of sandhi-variation types that learners have in relation to L2 listening proficiency. My second purpose was to evaluate links between aural input containing elision and assimilation and second language aural processing, to provide insight into how learners deal with sandhi-variation as they process such input. My third purpose was to investigate through the use of interviews the aural input that participants have encountered prior to the interventions of this study, to help explain which types of aural input can facilitate intake. Twenty-five first- and second-year Japanese university students participated in the current study. The participants completed a series of instruments, which included (a) a Test of English as a Foreign Language Paper-Based Test (TOEFL PBT), (b) a Listening Vocabulary Levels Test (LVLT), (c) a Modern Language Aptitude Test–Elementary (MLAT-E), (d) a Pre-Listening in English questionnaire, (e) an Elicited Imitation Test (EIT), and (f) a Background and Length of Residency interview. The EIT was used as a sandhi-variation listening test with two component parts (i.e., elision and assimilation) and two sub-component parts (e.g., two different utterance rates), using elicited imitation. Finally, the participants were interviewed about their language backgrounds to gauge their understanding and feelings about English. An empirical item hierarchy for elision and assimilation was investigated, along with the determinants of the hierarchy. Overall, the tendency was for items with elision and assimilation to be more difficult. Results also indicated that the two input rate variables combined with elision and assimilation affected the non-native participants’ listening comprehension. Moreover, the strength of the relationship between two measures of the participants’ language ability, proficiency and aptitude, and their comprehension of items with and without the phonological features of elision and assimilation, were investigated. The results confirmed a positive relationship between language aptitude as measured by the MLAT-E and the comprehension of the phonological features of elision and assimilation. Finally, the results indicated that there were no significant, positive correlations between English language proficiency scores and both the Pre-Listening Questionnaire, which measured the participants’ feelings about second language listening, and the Background and Length of Residency Interview. More research needs to be conducted to determine how learners’ backgrounds are related to listening comprehension in order to better prescribe aural input in second language listening classrooms.
Temple University--Theses

Intensive college-level ESL programs typically focus on building students' academic skills in English. Yet many ESL students leave the intensive programs only to find that they cannot sufficiently comprehend conversations with native English-speaking classmates or understand freshman-level lectures. While the students frequently perceive the problem as relating to the rapid speech tempo used by native speakers, an integral part of the comprehension problem is the pervasive use of modified forms of English, commonly called reductions, contractions, and assimilations. The present research investigates whether comprehension of certain modified forms of spoken informal English can be used to measure students' level of proficiency. The research, based on an integrative approach to learning, hypothesizes that successful identification of informal forms may be as reliable and valid as standardized tests currently used to measure students' proficiency in grammar and listening comprehension. The instrument for conducting the research is a contextualized taped dialogue presented as a cloze exercise which depends on redundancy features of English in addition to knowledge of grammatical structures to help the subject reconstruct missing grammatical elements of the dialogue. Research data were not statistically significant to support the original hypothesis because of small sample size, but some general conclusions can be drawn. Conclusions and recommendations are discussed with attention to current trends toward content-based classes.

This thesis explores the implications for language test validation of developments in language teaching and testing methodology, test validity and computer-based delivery. It identifies a range of features that tests may now exhibit in novel combinations, and concludes that these combinations of factors favour a continuing process of validation for such tests. It proposes such a model designed around a series of cycles drawing on diverse sources of data. The research uses the Five Star test, a private commercial test designed for use in a specific cultural context, as an exemplar of a larger class of tests exhibiting some or all of these features. A range of validation activities on the Five Star test is reported and analysed from two quite different sources, an independent expert panel that scrutinised the test task by task and an analysis of 460 test results using item-response theory (IRT). The validation activities are critically evaluated for the purpose of the model, which is then applied to the Five Star test. A historical overview of language teaching and testing methodology reveals the communicative approach to be the dominant paradigm, but suggests that there is no clear consensus about the key features of this approach or how they combine. It has been applied incompletely to language testing, and important aspects of the approach are identified which remain problematic, especially for the assessment of spoken language. They include the constructs of authenticity, interaction and topicality whose status in the literature is reviewed and determinability in test events discussed. The evolution of validity in the broader field of educational and psychological testing informs the development of validation in language testing and a transition is identified away from validity as a one-time activity attaching to the test instrument towards validation as a continuing process that informs the interpretation of test results. In test delivery, this research reports on the validation issues raised by computer-based adaptive testing, particularly with respect to test instruments such as the Five Star test that combine direct face-to-face interaction with computer-based delivery. In the light of the theoretical issues raised and the application of the model to the Five Star test, some implications of the model for use in other test environments are presented critically and recommendations made for its development.

Recent discussions on African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) have focused on the linguistic divergence and convergence hypotheses. Some linguists (Ash and Myhill 1986; Bailey and Maynor 1987, 1989; Graff, Labov, and Harris 1986; Labov 1983, 1987; Labov and Harris 1986; Luthin 1987; Myhill and Harris 1986; Thomas 1989) claim that AAVE is diverging from White Vernacular English (WVE) on a national level. However, other linguists (Butters 1987, 1988, 1989; Vaughn-Cooke 1986, 1987; Wolfram 1987) have challenged the divergence hypothesis, and have argued that AAVE is actually converging with WVE. They point out that the data in most of the studies supporting the divergence hypothesis were incomparable and manifested age-grading. In addition, these studies investigated only a few linguistic features. Most importantly, most of these studies lack the time-depth data which are essential to investigate language change.This study analyzed the time-depth data of speech samples from thirty-two African-American subjects, sixteen from 1980 and sixteen from 1993, in Muncie, Indiana. The subjects were both males and females, equally divided into young adult and elderly speakers. The analysis of the study focused on twenty-three syntactic and five phonological features.The results from the study have found no innovative features, either syntactic or phonological, in the speech of Muncie AAVE subjects. More importantly, the findings of the study, based on the time-depth data, have shown that Muncie AAVE was not divergent with WVE, but convergent with it, at least from 1980 to 1993. Thus, the findings of the study do not support the divergence hypothesis.
Department of English

This dissertation follows an oral language assessment tool from initial design and implementation to validity analysis. The specialized variables of this study are the population: international teaching assistants and the purpose: spoken assessment as a hiring prerequisite. However, the process can easily be applied to other populations and assessment goals.While evaluating the TBEST (Task-Based English Speaking Test) and TAST (TOEFL Academic Speaking Test), I search for a preponderance of evidence for assessment validity that indicate the most appropriate tool for evaluating potential ITAs. The specific evidences of assessment validity that are examined are:1. Evidence of Domain (Content) Validity: Which test, the TBEST or the TAST most closely measures the actual skills needed to be an ITA?2. Evidence of Predictive Criterion Validity: Which test, the TBEST or the TAST, is more valid in predicting ITA teaching success based on end of semester student evaluation (TCEs)?Following the analyses of these points of evidence, the results of a follow-up survey of ITA impressions about the ITA training and evaluating process are reviewed. Reviewing the results of this survey places the language assessment and hiring process recommendations within its larger context, directing attention toward suggestions for improvement of ITA training and evaluating procedures.Over the course of 18 months, 335 ITAs were assessed using the TBEST. 193 ITAs took the TAST prior to taking the TBEST, and those scores are used for correlation analysis. 119 ITAs participated in a follow up survey about their ITA experience.Analysis of domain validity shows that the TBEST is better suited for assessing ITAs than the TAST due to specialized assessment content not present on the more generic TAST. The TBEST is marginally better at predicting teaching success, though the results were statistically insignificant and recommendations are made for a follow-up study. Post-hoc analysis of the discriminative utility of both tests show that the TBEST results show more useful shades of distinction between candidates while the TAST results place the majority of students in a `fair' category which requires secondary interviews to assess teaching ability.

A OACI (Organização de Aviação Civil Internacional), órgão que estabelece regulamentações na aviação civil em nível mundial, define o inglês para aviação como uma junção entre a Fraseologia Aeronáutica sublinguagem empregada por pilotos e controladores de tráfego aéreo em comunicações radiotelefônicas em situações rotineiras e o inglês comum (plain English), utilizado quando a Fraseologia Aeronáutica não se mostra suficiente. Após averiguar que acidentes aéreos foram agravados por falhas de comunicação, a OACI passou a exigir dos profissionais supracitados uma licença para operações internacionais. Para tal licenciamento, é requerida uma avaliação de proficiência linguística, prescrita no Manual de Implementação de Proficiência Linguística, ou DOC 9835, publicado pela OACI em 2004. A partir de então, o inglês aeronáutico teve seu grau de importância elevado e começou a ser avaliado em países ao redor do mundo, por governos e/ou por instituições internacionais, e, nos últimos anos, foram publicados materiais didáticos que se propõem a atender a essa nova demanda. Identificando a falta de autenticidade nesses materiais, e um descompasso entre a definição proposta pela OACI e o Glossário de Estruturas Básicas e Complexas adicionado à segunda edição do DOC 9835 (ICAO, 2010), buscamos no aporte teórico da Linguística de Corpus uma metodologia para a descrição do plain English utilizado em contextos aeronáuticos em uso real. Assim, o objetivo desta pesquisa é apresentar um estudo descritivo da linguagem utilizada por controladores de tráfego aéreo e pilotos em comunicações radiotelefônicas em situações anormais; para atingi-lo, compilamos um corpus falado extraído desse contexto. A partir desse corpus, analisamos, primeiramente, os padrões fraseológicos no entorno de cinco itens lexicais runway [pista], aircraft [aeronave], emergency [emergência], fuel [combustível] e engine [motor] , que foram evidenciados como as palavras de conteúdo mais frequentes no corpus de estudo. Contrastamos, em seguida, nossos resultados com o Glossário de Estruturas do próprio DOC 9835. Nossos resultados apontam que, assim como recomendado pela OACI, o inglês para aviação é simples e objetivo, não correspondendo ao tipo de linguagem sugerida no referido anexo nem ao conteúdo programático dos materiais didáticos utilizados atualmente.
ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), a specialized agency which regulates civil aviation worldwide, defines aviation English as a combination of Aeronautical Phraseology a sublanguage used by air traffic controllers and pilots in radiotelephony communications in routine situations and plain English, used when Phraseology does not suffice. After verifying that air crashes were aggravated by miscommunications, ICAO started requesting a proficiency level accredited in the licenses of these two professionals when operating internationally. To obtain this license, applicants are required to take a proficiency exam, prescribed in the Manual of Implementation of Proficiency Requirements, or DOC 9835, published by ICAO in 2004. Since then, aviation English has reached a higher level of importance, and started being evaluated by governments and institutions throughout the world and, in the last years, coursebooks have been published with the objective of meeting those needs. Having identified a lack of authenticity in such materials, as well as an imbalance between the definition of aviation English in DOC 9835 and the Glossary of Basic and Complex Structures added to its second edition (ICAO, 2010), we used Corpus Linguistics as a methodology to investigate this language for special purposes in its real environment. Therefore, this research presents a description of the language used by air traffic controllers and pilots in radiotelephony communications when in abnormal situations. To achieve our goals, we compiled a spoken corpus extracted from this context. For this study, we primarily investigated the phraseological patterns in the surroundings of five lexical items runway, aircraft, emergency, fuel and engine , chosen because of their high frequency status in our corpus. We then contrasted our results with the Glossary attached to DOC 9835, which suggests a list of grammar structures on which the assessment and training of aviation English should be based. This research concludes with a demonstration of the simplicity, objectiveness and clarity of the plain English identified in our corpus, which does not correlate with the structures recommended in the Glossary nor with the language explored in coursebooks published to this end.

Adopting both qualitative and quantitative approaches with a strong element of triangulation, the present research aimed to investigate the issues of reticence and anxiety in oral English classroom-learning and testing situations at the tertiary level in Mainland China.
Following the ground work phase, the main study, which was divided into two phases, got underway. In the first phase, a 124-item survey was distributed to approximately 570 first-year undergraduate non-English majors at three different proficiency levels at Tsinghua University; 547 valid questionnaires were processed. In the second phase, three English language classes (one from each different proficiency group) were selected for the case study which continued for the full term: the students were required to write reflective journals with one entry per week for six consecutive weeks, the teachers were asked to observe and keep a weekly record of the students' reticence and anxiety in classroom activities during the whole term, the three classes were observed and video-taped twice, 7 students from each group and their teachers were invited for semi-structured interviews, and the final oral English test given to the students was observed and video-taped.
The large-scale survey was analyzed using SPSS 11.00---descriptive statistics, reliability, correlation, factor analysis, t-test, and ANOVA to examine students' self-reported reticence and anxiety and their relationships with other variables such as students' self-rated English proficiency. The journals, interviews, and observations were subjected to a thematic content analysis to explore students' reticence and anxiety during oral English lessons and tests, and identify factors underlying reticence and anxiety in oral English classroom-learning and testing situations as well as corresponding coping strategies adopted by the participants.
The major findings were: (1) a considerable number of students self-reported and were observed to be reticent and nervous during oral English lessons and tests. The more proficient students tended to be less reticent and anxious, (2) the more reticent student tended to be more anxious during oral English lessons and tests, (3) reticence and anxiety negatively affected students' performance in oral English, (4) student reticence and anxiety varied from activity to activity in the classroom and changed during both the term and final oral English test, (5) multiple factors contributed to student reticence and anxiety during oral English lessons and tests, (6) the majority of the participants felt helpless about student reticence and anxiety. Most teachers and students were not aware of how to effectively cope with them, and (7) reticence and anxiety interacted with each other in both situations. Based on these findings, certain pedagogical implications were discussed to reduce students' reticence and anxiety in oral English classroom-learning and testing situations, thus enhancing the teaching and learning of oral English in Mainland China. In addition to contributing to the overall literature of research on reticence and anxiety in Chinese and FL learning contexts, the present research revealed some areas for future research.
Liu Meihua.
"July 2005."
Adviser: Jane Jackson.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-01, Section: A, page: 0167.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 336-360).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstract in English and Chinese.
School code: 1307.

Lee Lin Yau, Sandy.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1996.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-95).
Introduction --- p.1
Research Objectives --- p.6
Background of Research / Literature Review --- p.8
Comparison of the Testing Techniques --- p.18
Research Methodology --- p.28
Data Analysis --- p.39
Opinion from Testers and Testees --- p.48
"Discussion, Recommendation and Areas of Further Research" --- p.51
Appendices --- p.59
Bibliography --- p.90

Written and oral material produced by a group of low-achieving learners of English from the 2-year lines of the Swedish upper secondary school was analysed from the perspective of grammatical correctness and communicative ability. The grammatical analysis focussed on the verb phrase and tests included both free production in speech and writing and elicitation tests. Communicative ability was assessed ‘ ‘objectively* ’ by identifying such parameters as fluency, copiousness and span, and “holistically” by using non-expert evaluators.The scores thus obtained were correlated. Grammatical correctness was correlated with communicative ability both in speech and in writing and writing proficiency was correlated with speech proficiency with respect to both grammatical correctness and communicative ability.Our findings are that there is a positive correlation between grammatical correctness and communicative ability. A remarkable finding is that the percentage of correct verb phrases correlates very weakly with communicative ability in written data. In oral data, the correlation is in fact slightly negative. The learner’s competence in grammar is reflected in both his written and oral performance. On the other hand, there is no correlation between communicative ability in writing and communicative ability in speech.The study shows that a working command of a set of syntactic rules is essential for communication. Errors are, however, an integral part of the learning process. The major part of errors are accounted for by the learner’s use of compensatory strategies. Among these low-achievers, communicative ability in conversation is distinct from writing ability.
digitalisering@umu

In many international schools where English is the language of learning and teaching there are large percentages of students whose first language is not English. Many of these students may have low vocabulary levels which inhibits their chances of taking full advantage of their education. Low vocabulary levels can be a particular problem for students in mainstream classes where fluent English speaking teachers are using English to teach content areas of Mathematics, Science and History. Not only do students have to comprehend the low-frequency, academic and technical vocabulary pertaining to the subject, but they also need to know the higher frequency vocabulary that makes up general English usage. If students’ vocabulary levels fall too far below the vocabulary levels with which their teachers are speaking, then their chance of comprehending the topic is small, as is their chance of succeeding in their subjects. This study has two broad aims. Firstly, I have set out to assess the English vocabulary levels of students at an international school where English is the language of learning and teaching. The majority of students at this school do not have English as their first language. The second aim of this study is to explore the vocabulary profile of the teachers’ spoken discourse at the research school. By gaining a better understanding of the nature of teacher discourse – specifically the percentage of high, mid and low-frequency vocabulary, as well as academic vocabulary that they use – English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers will be in a stronger position to identify what the vocabulary learning task is and be able to assist students in reaching the vocabulary levels necessary to make sense of their lessons. This study revealed a large gap between the generally low vocabulary levels of ESL students and the vocabulary levels spoken by their teachers. As a result the need for explicit vocabulary instruction and learning is shown to be very important in English medium (international) schools, where there are large numbers of students whose first language is not English.
Linguistics and Modern Languages
M.A. (Applied Linguistics)